Last few days, I had to get into time consuming exchanges with different people in Facebook regarding the Gadgil committee report & Kasturirangan Report. I find Facebook as a very difficult medium to articulate thoughts lucidly & logically. Hence, this blog where I intend to capture my thoughts around these two reports. Going forward, if any of my friends would like to debate me on this issue, please do so here. I do not intend to respond in Facebook.
I am starting with a statement that I am against implementing both the reports in its current form. I will explain my rationale later. But I am open to the idea that I am wrong. In fact, I will be glad if I am wrong, because that means a good thing for me personally, as I hail from one the places marked as ESA / ESZ-1.
A background on both reports
While the government is now saying that only Kasturirangan report is being implemented, I will take that only with a pinch of salt. That is because, it is NOT an expert committee report. The expert committee report is the Gadgil report. Since the Western Ghats is now a World Heritage Site (effective July 1st, 2012), India is bound to keep it protected as per a promise given to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). It was the WGEEP (Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - headed by Gadgil) report that the Indian representatives in the UN Convention had with them.
The HLWG (High Level Working Group) headed by Kasturirangan was setup to decide a future course of action based on the Gadgil report. In that sense, Kasturirangan report may be considered as one of the many phases of implementing the Gadgil report. It is all constructed and termed in such a vague manner that everybody is confused about both, so that, depending on the political convenience and international pressure, any government at any time can bring up both or part of them anytime. That's the way governments work, right? If you have been to a government office anytime for anything in India, you will know what I mean. If somebody files a case in Supreme Court and the Court asks the Government which is the report that is submitted by experts, Gadgil is the answer (unless MoEF explicitly rejects the report, which it hasn't done yet).
Having said that, by allowing myself to be a fool to trust the Government, I am starting with Kasturirangan recommendations, which is at the center of the storm at present.
Kasturirangan Report
The HLWG report is a 500+ page report in two volumes. The second volume is more or less an addendum, and the recommendations are in the first volume (175 pages). A summary of recommendations are given in pages xii - xxiii, and I will be consolidating my thoughts around these recommendations largely. (I am not attaching the report here, as you can always get it with a simple Google search).
How the reports were written
Even before we begin talking about recommendations, there is a remarkable nature of these reports that needs to be addressed first. Gadgil considers a 1600 km stretch covering more than 1,60,000 sqkm area as Western Ghat. I have read Gadgil saying that any development decision involving the Ghats should have a consent from the Gram Sabhas. But, how many Gram Sabhas he consulted before preparing his report? Of course, I understand that they are Experts in world ecology, hence they must have the divine knowledge to see through every complexity of nature-human interaction in this rather small area of 160,00 sqkm. Silly me!!!
Unfortunately, their divine knowledge could not see through one thing that permeats the entire human world - Political Power. Everybody who know how humans live, work and spread immediately knew the impact of putting this into practice right away. For example, almost 2/3rd of entire Kerala, about 2.2 crore people out of 3.3. Oh man! We need the Ghats to be preserved, but 2.2 crore people impacted? No way. We need to bring that down to a few millions at the most. It is okay for a few millions to suffer instead of a few hundred millions. We need to find the right guys whose voice can be ignored. Political power sprang into action. Damage containment. Hence HLWG.
It is indeed heart-warming that HLWG found almost the entire district of Idukki as ecologically fragile. No question about it. It warms my heart even more when I understand that one of the few places escaped the ESA tag is Vagamon! Of course, anybody who visited Vagamon would know that it is in Kottayam district and is ecologically more like Kochi than Idukki dist. I would have dreamt up all those misty mountains...I feel like I am one of those scepticists who questioned even our existence; what is the guarantee that this entire world is not just a dream?
Anyway, I, a poor layman whose geological knowledge is limited to the number of continents in the Earth and does not have a clue how government committees work and how they take decisions, take it for granted that both these committee's recommendations are indeed going to save the Western Ghats from the devilish human hands. Praise the Committees!!
In the next post, I will take up the various recommendations in the HLWG report.
I am starting with a statement that I am against implementing both the reports in its current form. I will explain my rationale later. But I am open to the idea that I am wrong. In fact, I will be glad if I am wrong, because that means a good thing for me personally, as I hail from one the places marked as ESA / ESZ-1.
A background on both reports
While the government is now saying that only Kasturirangan report is being implemented, I will take that only with a pinch of salt. That is because, it is NOT an expert committee report. The expert committee report is the Gadgil report. Since the Western Ghats is now a World Heritage Site (effective July 1st, 2012), India is bound to keep it protected as per a promise given to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). It was the WGEEP (Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - headed by Gadgil) report that the Indian representatives in the UN Convention had with them.
The HLWG (High Level Working Group) headed by Kasturirangan was setup to decide a future course of action based on the Gadgil report. In that sense, Kasturirangan report may be considered as one of the many phases of implementing the Gadgil report. It is all constructed and termed in such a vague manner that everybody is confused about both, so that, depending on the political convenience and international pressure, any government at any time can bring up both or part of them anytime. That's the way governments work, right? If you have been to a government office anytime for anything in India, you will know what I mean. If somebody files a case in Supreme Court and the Court asks the Government which is the report that is submitted by experts, Gadgil is the answer (unless MoEF explicitly rejects the report, which it hasn't done yet).
Having said that, by allowing myself to be a fool to trust the Government, I am starting with Kasturirangan recommendations, which is at the center of the storm at present.
Kasturirangan Report
The HLWG report is a 500+ page report in two volumes. The second volume is more or less an addendum, and the recommendations are in the first volume (175 pages). A summary of recommendations are given in pages xii - xxiii, and I will be consolidating my thoughts around these recommendations largely. (I am not attaching the report here, as you can always get it with a simple Google search).
How the reports were written
Even before we begin talking about recommendations, there is a remarkable nature of these reports that needs to be addressed first. Gadgil considers a 1600 km stretch covering more than 1,60,000 sqkm area as Western Ghat. I have read Gadgil saying that any development decision involving the Ghats should have a consent from the Gram Sabhas. But, how many Gram Sabhas he consulted before preparing his report? Of course, I understand that they are Experts in world ecology, hence they must have the divine knowledge to see through every complexity of nature-human interaction in this rather small area of 160,00 sqkm. Silly me!!!
Unfortunately, their divine knowledge could not see through one thing that permeats the entire human world - Political Power. Everybody who know how humans live, work and spread immediately knew the impact of putting this into practice right away. For example, almost 2/3rd of entire Kerala, about 2.2 crore people out of 3.3. Oh man! We need the Ghats to be preserved, but 2.2 crore people impacted? No way. We need to bring that down to a few millions at the most. It is okay for a few millions to suffer instead of a few hundred millions. We need to find the right guys whose voice can be ignored. Political power sprang into action. Damage containment. Hence HLWG.
It is indeed heart-warming that HLWG found almost the entire district of Idukki as ecologically fragile. No question about it. It warms my heart even more when I understand that one of the few places escaped the ESA tag is Vagamon! Of course, anybody who visited Vagamon would know that it is in Kottayam district and is ecologically more like Kochi than Idukki dist. I would have dreamt up all those misty mountains...I feel like I am one of those scepticists who questioned even our existence; what is the guarantee that this entire world is not just a dream?
Anyway, I, a poor layman whose geological knowledge is limited to the number of continents in the Earth and does not have a clue how government committees work and how they take decisions, take it for granted that both these committee's recommendations are indeed going to save the Western Ghats from the devilish human hands. Praise the Committees!!
In the next post, I will take up the various recommendations in the HLWG report.
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